Counsel of Queens
by Quillified
Summary: The king might be the most important piece in chess, but during gameplay the queen is the most powerful. Or: Seb Moran wants to talk to Anthea and Jo before she makes her move. (AU, Fem!John, Fem!Moran, post-Reichenbach.)


It's three in the afternoon and Sherlock has been scraping on his violin for a solid two hours when Jo gets the text.

_There's a car downstairs for you. Tell no one. –A_

It's straightforward enough, she supposes, slipping on her shoes and tucking her handgun into her waistband under her jumper. She creeps down the stairs with practiced caution; the man has superhuman hearing at the most inopportune moments. But Sherlock is busy, deep in his own mind, and doesn't react or stop playing even when she accidentally hits that troublesome third stair from the bottom. Open, shut, and there's a white car parked against the curb, with a familiar woman looking unfamiliar with her back straight and her face upturned. She isn't tapping on anything, but the phone is still in her hand.

"Bit different than usual, this," Jo says, a smile tugging on her mouth, and Anthea returns the brief expression. "I thought black was the norm with your lot."

"It is," Anthea nods, "but I am working independently today." She indicates the open door and slides in, patting the smooth leather beside her. "_We_ are working independently, I should say."

Joanna Watson doesn't categorize herself as curious, but nonetheless living with the world's Most Brilliant (Childish) Detective seems to have rubbed off on her somewhat. Besides, she rather likes Anthea and she was going to stuff Sherlock's violin down the disposal if he'd gone on any longer. She sits herself next to Anthea and waits, her own spine falling automatically into attention, for her briefing.

It's simple enough; Anthea passes her phone into Jo's hands and waits for Jo's eyes to adjust, then take in. It's a picture of Bart's (she swallows reflexively), with a date (today) and a time (in fifteen minutes) spraypainted onto the side. She wordlessly hands the phone back.

"Moran?" she asks shortly.

"Neither Sherlock nor Mr. Holmes are to know," Anthea replies.

"How?" Jo asks before she can stop herself, a chuffed chuckle escaping her. Anthea chuckles back.

"I can worry about my own boss. I'm sure you can worry about yours."

Jo bristles at the thought of Sherlock being her "boss", but perhaps the title had a different connotation for Anthea. She didn't say it like an employee would, at any rate; her voice had a softer touch, a more vicious edge. She can identify with that.

Bart's comes into view, and Jo reflects on how tired she is of this building. The scene of the Beginning, the End, and the Return. Funny how all the roads of her life seem to lead here. The white car slides into a parking space and Anthea exits first, her stiletto heels and her eyelashes both dark and murderously sharp. Jo feels short and dumpy in comparison, but the cold edge of her Browning and the conspicuous absence of pain from her historic "problem areas" makes her feel dangerous, in her own right. She at least wishes she'd had time to fix her hair properly. Not that it mattered.

The roof is a familiar sight, but the tall, lean figure cutting an impressive slash of dark denim and bleach-blond hair against the skyline is a new addition. Her hairstyle is outlandish for Jo's rather sensible tastes, but she knows that posture, that set in the shoulders. Her own shoulders mirror it—and, she's surprised to see, so do Anthea's. There's a lazy cigarette in Seb Moran's mouth, her boots planted firmly on a nonexistent stain long washed away by rain and cleaning crews.

She looks over her shoulder, towards the edge of the roof, and spits out her cigarette, grinding it beneath her toe. For whatever reason, the sound makes a small, primal part of Jo's insides cringe.

"What's all this about, then?" she asks, and Moran's dull blue eyes narrow. She feels, for a moment, like a child, but regains herself soon enough. She's not a child. Hasn't been for a long time.

"Thought I'd be chivalrous and hand out a warning," Moran says easily, her voice like an oil slick. "Ain't that a proper thing? Right generous of me, wouldn't you say?"

Jo doesn't trust herself to speak and Anthea's hands don't leave her pockets.

"You're a posh thing, though, ain't you?" Moran continues, her attention on Anthea now. "I suppose your master keeps you on a tight leash, don't he?" Anthea's composed expression seems to break something in Moran, at least for a moment, because Moran stands toe-to-toe with her, tall but still just short of Anthea's eyes, and spits. Anthea doesn't flinch, doesn't even wipe the tobacco-muddied saliva from her face until Moran steps back, apparently dissatisfied, because she looms over Jo next. "And you—you're Sherlock's, aren't you? I remember you—had you right in my crosshairs, I did, right until—" She makes a sound effect synonymous with dropping off a high cliff, grinning the entire time, and Jo clenches her fists. There's a light in Moran's eyes she thinks she doesn't understand as the taller woman leans, too far into Jo's personal space, too intimate.

"How come mine died and you got to keep yours, eh?" she whispers, and Jo feels a chill down her spine. "Just don't seem fair, do it?" Moran licks her lips. "Eye for an eye, the good Book says."

"Lay a finger on him," Jo replies evenly, "and I will end you."

"Should we consider this your declaration of war, Miss Moran?" Anthea says, all cold precision, pulling out her phone again. Moran recoils and strikes, knocking the phone from Anthea's hands and putting a knife through it, straight through the gravel and concrete. Jo's mouth goes dry at the display of speed and dexterity, but something in her itches, reacts. Her hand goes casually to her hip, her pinky brushing the edge of her Browning.

"Yeah, that's right," Moran says, her teeth all on display in a smile that electrifies her eyes. "Call it war, if you like. Just know that I'm coming for 'em, and you won't know when. You won't even be able to stop me, see, because I'll be smoke." She laughs, lighting up another cigarette. "Can't catch smoke. Can't stop it, neither. I'll crawl inside and they'll be choking on me and you won't be able to stop it."

Moran's eyes fasten on Jo's and her smile grows bigger.

"Then it'll be you standing on a rooftop without your sense of direction."

There's a red-hot grain of truth and memory in Moran's words, because Jo's shoes are very familiar with the roof and all its edges, especially—especially—

"Ciao, bellas," Moran laughs, sauntering towards the door. Jo's hand goes for her gun but Anthea's hand on her shoulder stops her. With fury and bile roiling in her throat she watches Seb Moran descend the stairs and out of sight. Jo glares at Anthea, and Anthea coolly looks back.

"If you shoot her now, there's no proof," she says simply. "Sherlock did a fair amount of cleanup—"

"Shut it," Jo says, her throat closing up, but Anthea is like her own Holmes and doesn't spare her.

"—but there are still too many loose ends," she finishes. "Moran's the key, but her metaphor was correct. She's smoke."

"We had her, though," Jo argues. "Right here, just seconds ago. Why couldn't we have just brought her in now?"

Anthea, her hand still on Jo's shoulder, rotates her slightly to the left. In a building about a block away she sees an unmistakable glint off the flat roof.

Jo lets Anthea escort her downstairs and back into the waiting white car, but she refuses to talk to her. Finally, in front of Baker Street, she turns.

"Why even come, then?" she asks. "Why not just get Mycroft on it?"

"It's a principle of chess," Anthea says, returning to her phone. "The king is the most important piece…but, in the field, the queen is the most powerful." One of her shaded dark eyes darts out and catches Jo's. "Are we together in this, Joanna?"

In Afghanistan there was another woman soldier, younger than Jo, who cheated at cards and swore and drank on her off-days, and Jo remembers first stitching up a cut from another soldier's fist, then trying to staunch a bullet's ripped trajectory through her stomach from the enemy. She remembers how that girl glared at the sun, so strong but so alone and eventually so dead. Jo swallows against the sand in her memory then holds out her hand to Anthea.

It's wordless, of course it is, but as Jo goes back upstairs to a suspiciously silent flat, she feels the invisible weight of a diadem made of needles and violin strings. She switches on the light, and Sherlock blinks owlishly at her from his position on the—_dear God what has he done to the couch_.

"Experiment," he grunts as she returns the stuffing to the couch and piles a throw and a pillow in front of the rip (yet another thing to try to describe to Mrs. Hudson, she _has_ to get Sherlock out of the flat more often). She raps her fist against his skull, pausing a second too long when his slightly greasy curls brush against her skin. He lets her linger, lets her stroke her fingers through his hair, and bats her away when she grabs a fistful of it and tilts his head back to plant her mouth on his forehead.

The night is a relatively quiet one, but Jo's heart still stops every time she can't hear Sherlock stomping around in a fit of pique. Later, drowsing in front of the telly while Sherlock fiddles with something in the kitchen, she catches a glance of him and notices that he's looking too thin again. His hair, which has grown back and grown back with a vengeance, seems to swallow him. Backlit by the solitary lamp in the kitchen (new light bulbs, she must remember next time), he almost looked angelic. The edges of his hair flare gold for an instant, and Jo imagines she can count the peaks in his crown.

She sleeps on the couch with her gun on the floor and her hanging fingertips brushing against it that night.

* * *

A/N: Just something I've been mulling over for a few months that finally found a voice. IDK. Post-Reichenbach, post-Sherlock's return, and Sherlock is kind of regressing because he can't go into public much. The public tends to react violently to resurrected dead men. They're working on it. Um. Anyway. Enjoy this bit of dorkery.


End file.
